


The Carry On Rewrite: Staring Daemons!

by feel_like_plastic_waste



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon Rewrite, Daemons, M/M, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-08 15:13:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feel_like_plastic_waste/pseuds/feel_like_plastic_waste
Summary: Please don't sue me Rainbow Rowell.This is basically just a rewrite of Carry On, but I'll be adding chapters, scenes and many details concerning daemons, since this is a daemon au, but I will try my best to stick with the canon too.Enjoy.





	1. Chapter 1

_**Simon** _

I walk to the bus station by myself, Lucillia by my side. 

There’s always a fuss over my paperwork when I leave. All summer long, we’re not even allowed to walk to Tescos without a chaperone and permission from the Queen- then, in the autumn, I just sign myself out of children’s home and go.

“He does to a  _ special  _ school,” one of the office ladies explains to the other when I leave. They’re sitting in a Plexiglas box, and I slide my papers back to her through a slot in the wall. “It’s a school for dire offenders,” she whispers. 

The other woman doesn’t even look up. Luci growl, her ears pinning against her head, her usually wagging tail going still. “Ignore them,” she tells me. 

It’s like this every September, even though I’m never in the same care home twice.

The Mage fetched me for school himself the first time, when I was 11. Luci would shift to mimic his huge vulture daemon and fly above them. But the next year, he told me I could make it to Watford on my own. “ _ You’ve slain a dragon, Simon. Surely you can manage a long walk and a few buses _ .” 

I hadn’t meant to slay that dragon. It wouldn’t have hurt me, I don’t think. (I still dream about it sometimes. The way the fire consumed it from the inside out, like a cigarette burn eating a piece of paper. Luci hates that dream.)

I get to the bus station, then eat a mint Aero while I wait for the first bus. There’s another bus after that. Then a train. 

Once I’m settled on the train, I try to sleep with my bag in my lap and my feet propped up on the seat across from me- but a man a few rows back won’t stop watching me. I feel his eyes crawling up my back. Lucillia wraps around my neck as a viper, keeping her eyes on the man, but she can’t see his daemon. 

Could be a pervert. Or police.

Or it could be a bonety hunter who knows about one of the prices on my head…. (“It’s  _ bounty  _ hunter,” I said to Penelope the first time we fought one. “No- it’s  _ bonety  _ hunter,” she replied, Ambrose giving me the stink eye. “Short for ‘bone-teeth’; that’s what they get to keep if they catch you.”) 

I change carriages and don’t bother trying to sleep again. The closer I get to Watford, the more restless I feel. Luci can feel it too, since she can’t stop wriggling around and moving from my neck to my arms to my legs and back to my neck. Every year, I think about jumping from the train and spelling myself the rest of the way to school, even if it puts me in a coma. Luci is the only one preventing me to.

I could cast  **Hurry Up** on the train, but that’s a chancy spell at the best of times, and my first few spells of the school year are always especially dicey. I’m supposed to practise during the summer- small, predictable spells when no one’s looking. Like turning on night-lights. Or changing apples to oranges.

“Spell your buttons and laces closed,” Miss Possibelf suggested, scratching her daemon between his antlers. “That sort of thing.”

“I only ever wear one button,” I told her, then blushed when she looked down at my jeans.

“Then use your magic for household chores,” she said. “Wash the dishes. Polish the silver.” 

I didn’t bother telling Miss Possibelf that my summer meals are served on disposable plates and that I eat with plastic cutlery (forks and spoons, never knives).

I also didn’t bother to practise my magic this summer, no matter how many times Luci nagged me. 

It’s boring. And pointless. And it’s not like it  _ helps _ . Practising doesn’t make me a better magician; it just sets me off…. 

Nobody knows why my magic is the way it is. Why it goes off like a bomb instead of flowing through me like a fucking stream or however it works for everybody else. 

“I don’t know,” Penelope said when I asked her how magic feels for her. “I suppose it feels like a well inside me. So deep that I can’t see or even imagine the bottom. But instead of sending down buckets, I just think about drawing it up. And then it’s there for me- as much as I need, as long as I stay focused.”

Penelope always stays focused. Plus, she’s powerful. Ambrose, her daemon, is a colourful little bird, but he’s just as tough. His form fits Penny like a glove, as all settled forms should. 

Agatha isn’t. Not as, anyway. And Agatha doesn’t like to talk about her magic. 

But once, at Christmas, I kept Agatha up until she was tired and stupid and Saewulf could barely shift, and she told me that casting a spell felt like flexing a muscle and keeping it flexed. “Like  _ croisé devant _ ,” she said. “You know?”

I shook my head. Luci pawed at Saewulf, but Agatha pulled him towards her before my daemon could touch him.

She was lying on a wolfskin in front of the fire, all curled up like a pretty kitten, Saewulf curled up at her side as a black cat. “It’s ballet,” she said. “It’s like I just hold position as long as I can.” 

Baz told me that for him, it’s like lighting a match. Or pulling a trigger.

He hadn’t meant to tell me that, nor did he really. It was when we were fighting the chimera in the woods during our fifth year. It had us cornered, and Baz wasn’t powerful enough to fight it alone (The  _ Mage  _ isn’t powerful enough to fight a chimera alone) and his daemon panicked.

“Do it Snow!” Baz shouted at me. “Do it. Fucking unleash. Now.”

“I can’t,” I tried to tell him. “It doesn’t work like that.” 

“It bloody well does.” 

“I can’t just turn it on,” I repeated.

“ _ Try! _ ”

“I  _ can’t _ , damn it!” I was waving my sword around- I was pretty good with a sword already at 15- but the chimera wasn’t corporeal. (Which is my rough luck, pretty much always. As soon as you start carrying a sword, all your enemies turn out mist and gossamer.)

“Close your eyes and light a match.” I hear a soft voice tell me. We were both trying to hide behind a rock. Baz was casting spells one after another, practically singing them, while Luci had hidden as a hedgehog inside my jacket and Baz’s daemon, Aphrodite, was huddled as a cat between his legs. 

“What?” 

Aphrodite always took on elegant, pretty forms; even then she had been in the form of a handsome bengal cat, even though her fur had been fluffed out with fear. She spoke to me with great calm and with a voice that made her sound like someone’s big sister.

“That’s what our mother used to say,” she said. “Light a match inside your heart, then blow on the tinder.” 

It’s always fire with Baz. I can’t believe he hasn’t incinerated me yet. Or burned me at the stake. Then again, maybe Aphrodite stops him from trying.

He used to threaten me with a Viking’s funeral, back when we were third years. “Do you know what that is, Snow? A flaming pyre, set adrift on the sea. We could do yours in Blackpool, so all your chavvy Normal friends can come.”

“Sod off,” I’d say, Luci taking on the biggest form she could at the time and growling. 

I’ve never even had any Normal friends, chavvy or otherwise. 

Everyone in the Normal world steers clear of me if they can, their daemons darting away from Luci as if she would suddenly go mad and attack them.

Penelope says they sense my power and instinctively shy away. Like dogs who won’t make eye contact with their masters. (Not that I’m anyone’s master- that not what I mean.)

Anyway, it works the opposite with magicians. They love the smell of magic; I have to try hard to make them hate me. 

Unless they’re Baz. He’s immune. Maybe he’s built up a tolerance to my magic, having shared a room with me every term for seven years.

The night that we were fighting the chimera, Baz kept yelling at me until I went off. 

We both woke up a few hours later in a blackened pit. The boulder we’d been hiding behind was brown dust, and the chimera was vapour. Or maybe it was just gone. 

Baz was sure I’d singed off off Aphrodite’s fur, but they both looked fine to me- not a hair or fur out of place.

Typical.


	2. On the way to Watford

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one took me longer for no reason and I have no excuse other than laziness  
> :3  
> Anyway enjoy

**_Simon_ **

I don’t let myself think about Watford over the summers, going as far as ignoring Luci whenever she talks about it.

After my first year there, when I was 12- I spent the whole summer thinking about it. Thinking about everyone I’d met at school- Penelope, Agatha, The Mage. About the towers and the grounds. The teas. The pudding. The  _ magic _ . The fact that  _ I _ was magic. 

I made myself sick thinking about the Watford School of Magicks- daydreaming about it- until it started to feel like nothing more than a daydream. Just another fantasy to make time pass. 

Like when I used to dream about becoming a footballer someday- or that my parents, my real parents, were going to come back for me…

My dad would be a footballer with a rough and tough bear for a daemon. And my mum would be some posh model type with an elegant fox daemon or maybe even a pretty bird with long tail feathers. And they’d explain how they’d had to give me up because they were too young for a baby, and because his career was on the line. “ _ But we always missed you, Simon _ ,” they’d say. “ _ We’ve been looking for you _ .” And then they’d take me away to live in their mansion. 

Footballer mansion… Magickal boarding school… 

They both seem like crap in the light of day. (Especially when you wake up in a room with seven other discards.)

That first summer, I’d beaten the memory of Watford to a bloody pulp by the time my bus fare and papers showed up in the autumn, along with a note from the Mage himself, signed with his own daemon’s footprint… 

_ Real _ . It was all real.

So, the  _ next  _ summer, after my second year at Watford, I didn’t let myself think about magic at all. For months, I just shut myself off from it, not matter how excited Luci would get thinking about it, I didn’t miss it like she did, I didn’t wish for it.

I decided to let the World of Mages come back to me like a big surprise present come September, if it was going to. (And it  _ did  _ come back. It always has, so far.)

The Mage used to say that maybe someday he’d let me spend summers at Watford- or maybe even spend them with him, wherever he goes all summer. The thought of it made Luci trilled and she chattered about it as a parrot every time summer inched closer, perched on my shoulders and going on and on about how amazing The Mage’s vacations would be, and how spending time with him and his daemon would be the best summer ever. Sometimes I think she likes The Mage more than she likes me.

But then he decided I was better off spending part of every year with the Normals. I remember Luci sulking as a sad little mouse in my jacket pocket all day after he said this. He said it was to stay close to the language and to keep my wits about me:  _ “Let hardship sharpen your blade, Simon.” _

I thought he meant my actual blade, the Sword of Mages. Luci told me to stop being so dimwitted: _ “He means you, Simon.” _

Right.

_ I’m _ the blade. The Mage’s sword. And I’m not sure if these summers in children’s homes make me any sharper… But they do make me hungrier. They make me crave Watford like, I don’t know, like life itself. I could even compare it to being far apart from Luci, which is the most horrible feeling in the world. It happened once. Never again. 

Baz and his side- all the old, rich families with daemons so fancy they look fake- they don’t believe anyone can understand magic the way they do. They think they’re the only ones who can be trusted with it.

But no one  _ loves  _ magic like me and Luci do.

None of the other magicians- none of my classmates, none of their parents- know what it’s like to live without magic. 

Only I know.

And Luci agrees with me when I say I’ll do  _ anything  _ to make sure it’s always here for me to come home to.

 

I  _ try  _ not to think about Watford when I’m away- but it was almost impossible this summer. Especially since Luci wouldn’t shut up about it.

After everything that happened last year though, I don’t blame her. I couldn’t believe The Mage would even pay attention to something like the end of term. Who interrupts a war to send kids home for summer holidays?

Besides, I’m  _ not _ a kid anymore. Luci might not be settled yet, but legally I could have left care at 16. I could’ve gotten my own flat somewhere. Maybe in London. 

_ “We could afford it.” _ Luci had told me when I’d shared the idea with her.  _ “We do have that entire duffel-sized bag of leprechaun's gold. You know, the one that only disappears if you try to give it to other magicians?” _

_ “Of course I know. I’m not stupid.” _

_ “Well…” _

But The Mage sent me and Luci off to a new children’s home, just like he always does. Still, moving me around like a pea under shells after all these years. Like I’d be safe there. Like the Humdrum couldn’t just summon me, or whatever it was he did to me and Penelope at the end of last term. 

_ “He can summon you?!” _ Penny had demanded, trying to catch her weakened breath as soon as we got away from him.  _ “Across a body of water? That isn’t possible, Simon. There’s no precedent for that!” _

_ “Next time he summons me like a half-arsed squirrel demon,” _ I’d replied,  _ “I’ll tell him so!” _

Penelope had been unlucky enough to be holding my arm when I was snatched, so she’d been snatched right along with me. Our daemons, however, hadn’t been as lucky. Normals can’t last very long as far apart from their daemons as magicians can, so while it did significantly weaken us to be away from them, we weren’t on the verge of death or anything. But that doesn’t take away the horrible feeling of being so far away from Luci. I could feel her pain as well; even Penny had a hard time thinking straight while so far away from Ambrose. Still, her quick thinking is the only reason either of us escaped. 

“ _ Simon,” _ she said that day, when we were finally on a train back to Watford, some type of illusion spell around us as to make the Normals think we had our daemons with us.  _ “This is serious.” _

_ “Siegfried and fucking Roy, Penny, I know that it’s serious. He’s got my number. I don’t even have my number! But the bloody Humdrum got it down.” _

_ “How can we still know so little about him,” _ She fumed, both of us snappy from the irritation of having our souls so far away.  _ “He’s so...:” _

_ “Insidious,” _ I said.  _ “The Insidious Humdrum’ and all that.” _

_ “Stop teasing, Simon. This is serious!” _

_ “I know, Penny.” _

When we got back to Watford, Luci lunged at me in the shape of a pretty bengal tiger, her claws digging almost painlessly into my skin while Ambrose was pushing his small bird body onto Penny’s chest as much as he could, both of them desperate to never let us far from them again. The Mage heard us out after that and made sure we weren’t hurt, but then he sent us on our way. Just.... sent us home. 

It didn’t make any sense.

So,  _ of course _ , I spent this whole summer listening to Luci blabble her mouth off about it, telling me how she’d shifted into a full on  _ dragon  _ and flew as far as she could to find me until she was eventually too tired to fly. Her worry and fear about everything that happened and everything that  _ could  _ happen and everything that’s at stake… she and I both stewed on it.

But I still don’t let myself dwell on any of the  _ good  _ things, you know? It’s the good things that’ll drive you mad with missing them.

I keep a list- of all the things I miss most- and I’m not allowed to touch it in my head until I’m about an hour from Watford. Even Luci doesn’t know about the list. I run through the list one by one, kinda like easing yourself into cold water. But the opposite of that, I suppose- easing yourself into something really good, so the shock of it doesn’t overwhelm you.

Anyway, I’m about an hour from school now, so I mentally take out my list and press my fingers against the smooth scales of Luci’s snake form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some daemons don't have names, either because they are background characters, or because I just have no idea what would fit. However, if you have any name suggestions for a character's daemon, please comment ahead! I'd love to get name suggestions!
> 
> Simon - Lucillia (Unsettled)  
> Baz - Aphrodite (Unsettled)  
> Penny - Ambrose (Settled as a Superb Starling)  
> Agatha - Saewulf (Unsettled)  
> The Mage - ??? (King Vulture)  
> Miss Possibelf - ??? (Red Deer)

**Author's Note:**

> Some daemons don't have names, either because they are background characters, or because I just have no idea what would fit. However, if you have any name suggestions for a character's daemon, please comment ahead! I'd love to get name suggestions!
> 
> Simon - Lucillia (Unsettled)  
> Baz - Aphrodite (Unsettled)  
> Penny - Ambrose (Settled as a Superb Starling)  
> Agatha - Saewulf (Unsettled)  
> The Mage - ??? (King Vulture)  
> Miss Possibelf - ??? (Red Deer)


End file.
